Best Friends Pulls Away!
Goodbye and Thank You!
We would like to thank Best Friends for the past nine months. As most of you know, Best Friends came to Pets Alive when we were in a desperate situation and they helped us in every way imaginable. They hired staff and taught us how to properly care for and house the animals. They helped us develop a network of volunteers and supporters, showed us better adoption practices, helped us train the animals (and the staff), and helped teach us how to stand on our own two feet. We’re doing that now. Maybe a little wobbly in our new shoes but we are definitely on our own two feet. We are grateful.

Do you want to see Pets Alive continue as a no-kill shelter in this area? If so then we need your support. We need your donations, your volunteer time, and your assistance to make this happen. PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING A DONATION NOW to help Pets Alive stay afloat. We especially need help these first few months when times will be the most difficult, and before we can start fund raising. WILL YOU PLEASE LEND A HAND?
Rob and Marisol Thomas fans will be happy to know that they are very supportive and willing to do whatever it takes to see Pets Alive continue! They are planning a benefit for us in the fall and will continue to help us with their wonderful Sidewalk Angels Foundation. In addition, Marisol’s Mom and Dad are moving into the area and are going to start coming by once a week as volunteers! Marisol’s whole family are true animal lovers. We know where she got it from. We can’t wait to put them to work.
We have started to take in animals again — dogs only at this time as we still have too many cats and horses right now and are still looking for homes. So far we have brought in about 27 dogs and placed 21 of them. Not bad for three weeks! Tomorrow we will be taking in another 26 dogs. These dogs are coming in from all over and we are taking them in on a case by case basis. Some of these dogs are coming from local shelters that are full and are having to start to put dogs down. We’re working to become a resource for area organizations so that these animals do not have to die needlessly.

We have taken in dogs from the south where the euthanasia rate is at about 85% in many of these shelters. Some shelters even closed down for the holidays, euthanized every animal and then they open back up and start taking in animals again! We saw pictures and pictures of beautiful, young, friendly dogs. Many were puppies! We started taking some in, but the cost makes this something we can continue to do. In this case we had sponsors that helped us — Thanks Rose T. Each dog has to be spayed and neutered, chipped, vaccinated and transported. CAN YOU HELP? Our spays and neuters are costing us $125, vaccinations and chipping $60, transport $85. Our adoption fees are $175 for these dogs. WILL YOU PLEASE HELP? Our biggest need is for help with transporting these dogs and financial support for them. We can’t stand to see them put down. Healthy, beautiful, YOUNG dogs euthanized when we are easily finding them homes here. We need your support, and your voices.
All the dogs pictured on this page were saved these past two weeks. Look at these faces. These are the nicest dogs you could ever meet. No aggression issues — these are friendly, sweet, wonderful dogs that get along well with other animals and love people. They are so grateful for a look, a touch and a pat. They are the most amazing group of dogs we’ve ever worked with. Look at them. Then help us to help them! Many are still up for adoption. See one you like? Fill out our adoption application and we’ll have you come down to met them!
Volunteers
Our volunteers continue to be amazing. We are extending our volunteer days. We’d love to have you at Pets Alive ANY day of the week (between 10-4). We need your help with some of the former staff tasks. Can you come one day a week or one day a month?
Can you clean litter pans, sweep floors, or clean dog food bowls? Can you brush cats and horses and load hay feeders for us? Are you a carpenter? Do you paint? Work with farm animals? Do data entry and are you familiar with Quickbooks? We need someone to enter in donations and enter dogs into our database. Are you an event planner? Please email Jill to let her know your skills and we may call on you for special jobs! We have so many duties and tasks that need to be done daily here. We’re also looking for some people that can do some WEEKLY or DAILY things for us. We need help with the daily laundry. can you come and do some loads of wash for us a few times a week (we have washers and dryers right here!). We need someone to go weekly to pick up cat litter or dog food for us from a local provider. We need someone that can go each week and pick up any supplies we need from Wal-Mart or PetSmart or Home Depot. Can you commit to one day a week to running some errands for us? We need help with people dropping off animals at the vets for us in the morning, and picking them up again at night. Can you do a drop off or a pick up a few times a week or a few times a month for us? We need volunteers to help us clean up the puppy pens. We have puppies again and they need to be cleaned up after three and four times a day! We need people that can help with plowing our driveway when it snows. That is a SERIOUS consideration for us. If you are too busy WHEN it snows, how about the next day – can you plow a path to our manure pile? It would make life so much easier for our staff.
Please contact volunteer@petsalive.com if you can help with ANYTHING at all! Anything you can do, we can probably find a use for. We REALLY need community support now more than ever. Winter always has a drop off in volunteers and this is the time of year when we have the most to do. Please help and give back to your community and please help these dogs and cats and horses that currently have no homes. We’re working to make their lives better every day and a big part of that is asking you to help us. If you have offered to help in the past and think we have all your contact information and know what you do, please don’t believe that! We are building a whole new database and we need your information again.

We are also gearing up for our next fundraiser which will be a published cookbook made up of your recipes! Please send your favorite recipes to jill@petsalive.com (they don’t have to be original recipes — just your favorites) and you could have your name in the Pets Alive 2008 cookbook! You can find the form to fill out here.
Current Needs
We can’t be coy. Our current needs are MONEY. Won’t you please consider a donation or visit our sponsor page and sponsor an animal here every month. We also could use gift cards. Did you get some for the holidays that you could pass on to us? Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes and any supermarket cards would be very helpful! We also need lumber and chicken wire. Have any laying around? Please let us know!
Lastly, we need a groomer. We are willing to work with you and allow you to work out of our shop, with our equipment in return for a percentage of your fees and to do a couple of dogs a week for us (mostly bathing and nail trimming). If you would like to work with us on this, we can refer our adopters to you and you can make your own hours and appointments.
Other News:
OK, so we’ve been talking a lot about the dogs…what about the rest of the animals here? Well we placed many of the farm animals and wild birds at Chenoa Manor. There they are in proper environments and are living with experienced farm and bird caretakers. Tusk and Bristle Pig Sanctuary also adopted our pigs into their wonderful pig program. That leaves us with dogs, horses and cats.
The cats are doing very well but we really need to get some of these wonderful felines into homes. We still have 75 cats on the property and so one of our focuses in the coming months will be to increase cat adoptions. Our volunteer group headed up by Joyce and Becky put together some GREAT cat flyers and are going out within an hour radius (and then some) and posting ADOPT ME flyers in windows and local veterinarians and local businesses. We are also going to do some cat adoption events at local pet places (PetSmart and Rusty’s Place to name a few) to see if we can get some of them into good homes!
The good news is that Barclay, our three legged FIV cat that was fostered by Sandy, got a great home this week and so did staff favorite – Big Stuff. We’re thrilled that these two found such wonderful homes. Good luck guys. On a sadder note, we lost October this month. She had been sick for some time and she finally succumbed to her illness. We are very sad to not see her in the window each morning, and her sponsors, Steve and Edie were heart broken at the loss of this sweet cat. Rest in peace, October.